Novels by StaryUll

The main portal standing at the center of The Nexus plaza wasn't merely enormous.It was a science fiction monument the size of a cathedral, constructed from the remains of the Grand Deleter's Ring.When the cosmic machine activated, it didn't produce the ordinary hum of machinery.Its voice was a harmony of crashing oceans, steam engines, and raging storms, all resonating at a perfectly synchronized frequency.WHOOOOOOSH!A burst of sapphire-blue light exploded from the heart of the gateway, forming a swirling vortex of liquid mercury spinning inward.All around the plaza, thousands of Nexus citizens, cyborgs from Aethelgard, fishfolk from Thalassa, priests from Aurelia, and mafia members from Nox-Machina, stopped panicking about the Prime Architect.They crowded around the portal, staring at it with wide eyes.Oliver drifted down from the balcony of his tower.His body, woven from white and golden light, descended slowly, passing flickering casino neon signs and Victorian-style stre

[TIME SKIP: 7 DAYS LATER.]Seven days.One hundred and sixty-eight hours had passed since Oliver Warner tore open the boundaries of the universe and stitched five dimensions together like a cosmic patchwork quilt. To cosmic entities, a week was nothing more than the blink of an eye. But for a world that had just been born from a Hacker's homemade Big Bang, those seven days had been an utterly insane period of adjustment.Oliver stood on the balcony of a towering structure located at the exact gravitational center of the new city.He looked up at what he had created.The view below was the very definition of perfect chaos.If you threw Las Vegas, industrial-era London, Atlantis, mythological heaven, and a 1920s mafia movie into one gigantic blender, you'd end up with this city.The Nexus.To the north, a replica of the Eiffel Tower from Earth V99 rose into the sky, but its foundation was wrapped in massive brass pipes and enormous gears from Aethelgard that turned endlessly while venti

If you asked Oliver Warner what it felt like to become a god, he'd answer like this:It felt like being pulled in ten different directions by ten enraged hippos while solving quantum physics at the same time.In the flattened emptiness of Necro-Prime, Oliver's body of pure energy floated like a living constellation. His arms were spread wide. From each of his ten glowing fingers extended threads of golden and black light. The threads pierced through dimensional boundaries, anchoring themselves directly to the cores of the five worlds he had just liberated.The System inside his mind, now little more than his personal dashboard, screamed without end.Golden warning panels flashed across his vision.[WARNING: COSMIC-LEVEL SPATIAL LAW VIOLATION.][MERGING SEPARATE DIMENSIONAL COORDINATES WILL RESULT IN A DIMENSIONAL COLLISION.][PROBABILITY OF TOTAL MATERIAL DESTRUCTION ACROSS EARTH, AETHELGARD, THALASSA, AURELIA, AND NOX-MACHINA: 88.7%.]"Shut up, System," Oliver hissed.His voice echoe

"You cheated..."Lady Luck's voice was no longer elegant or melodic. It trembled, cracked, and warped with cosmic fury that made the air over Necro-Prime boil. Her pale, beautiful face hardened as veins of white light bulged along her neck.She raised her right hand, fingers curled like an eagle's talons, ready to tear Oliver's existence apart.But before the killing energy could leave her palm, chains of pure binary code suddenly shot out from the shattered gaming table.CLANK! CLANK!The golden chains wrapped around Lady Luck's wrists, neck, and waist.They weren't Oliver's magic.They were the Gambler's Oath.An absolute law of the universe that bound anyone who dared sit at the cosmic table. Even a Rebel Architect couldn't break the rules she had created herself."RELEASE ME!" Lady Luck screamed, struggling violently. Wings of pure white light exploded from her back as she tried to tear the chains apart.The chains only tightened.Dragging the Goddess of Luck farther and farther a

The mahogany table stood alone in the endless void, illuminated by the only source of light left in Necro-Prime, the radiance of the five Compass Shards spinning within Oliver's chest.Lady Luck sat with one leg crossed over the other, her emerald gown reflecting the glow of dead stars. She smiled, graceful and refined, yet hiding the cunning of a cosmic predator."A game of dice," Lady Luck said, her voice ringing like crystal against crystal. "Simple, ancient, and absolute. But since we're wagering existence itself, those plastic dice from your rundown casino won't be enough."The goddess raised her pale right hand.She didn't reach into a pocket for dice.Instead, she opened her palm, and the empty space above the table suddenly warped. Two dead dwarf planets, the abandoned corpses of a long-erased solar system, were pulled across the Void from unimaginable distances.Right before Oliver's eyes, Lady Luck compressed the space surrounding the planets.Absolute gravity took hold, cru

The air over Necro-Prime suddenly stopped moving. The drifting bone dust froze in place beneath the crushing weight of the cosmic gravity erupting from Lady Luck's body. The goddess drew no weapon. She summoned no deadly energy. She simply changed forms. Her Architect aura dissolved, blending absolute order and pure chaos into a single existence. "You think you still have a choice, Oliver Warner?" Lady Luck's voice was no longer gentle. It echoed like billions of gold coins crashing together inside a cathedral of white marble. "Without me, you don't know the coordinates home. Without me, you will rot in this graveyard forever. Hand over those keys, or I will leave you here to witness eternity in silence." Oliver didn't take a single step back. His body of light trembled violently as he resisted the pressure threatening to tear apart every molecule of data that made up his existence. He knew Lady Luck was right. If she walked away now, he had no navigation map capable of break

A gray haze blanketed the sea like a rotting shroud. The water was black, viscous, and smelled of iron. The lifeboat drifted without direction, creaking each time a small wave struck its cracked hull. Elios sat along the side, his back pressed against damp wood. His breathing was heavy. His combat jacket was torn in several places, the blood dried into black crust. His eyes were sunken, but still alert. Vera lay at the bottom of the boat, wrapped in an emergency blanket that had long since turned gray. Her lips were cracked. “You… still alive?” Elios’s voice rasped. Vera moved a finger. “Unfortunately… yeah.” “Good.” “I was hoping you’d say ‘thank God’ or something.” Elios snorted. “I’m an atheist.” The fog shifted. The sun was nothing more than a pale shadow behind volcanic ash clouds. No direction. No birds. No wind. Just a dead sea. Vera licked her lips. “Water?” Elios lifted an empty plastic bottle and shook it. No sound. “Fuck,” Ver

The purple light was blinding, hot, and promised the end of all the pain crushing him.Elios shut his eyes tightly. He could feel the Chaos energy gathering in Lyra’s palm, his wife, his queen, and now his executioner. The power was ready to erase his existence down to the last atom.He was not afraid of dying.He was simply tired. Very tired.Sleep well, my love, Elios whispered silently to himself.But the death he had been waiting for never came.Another apocalypse arrived first.GGRRRRRRR-BOOOOOM!It was not the explosion from Lyra’s hand. The thunderous roar came from below, from the deepest belly of the earth. The sabotage Elios had planted in the main reactor twenty minutes earlier had finally reached its climax.The reactor core, stripped of its cooling system, did not merely melt down. It detonated violently, triggering a chain reaction that shattered the tectonic foundation beneath Facility Zero.The floor of the frozen crater split apart with a deafening crack.KRAAAK!The

Thick purple smoke shrouded the Ice Crater, swirling like a nebula storm in a vacuum.Lyra’s colossal body, which had filled the horizon moments ago, was shrinking at an unnatural speed. Flesh, bone, and muscle compressed inward with a series of wet, sickening cracks, the sound of biological matter being forcibly reshaped.Elios lost his footing. The giant’s back he had been standing on vanished beneath him.He fell.But he did not plunge into the abyss.The gravitational field around Lyra was still unstable from the removal of the Holy Iron Stake. Fragments of the platform, slabs of ice, and Elios himself floated in the air, suspended in weightless stasis.At the center of the vortex of dust and energy, a new figure took shape.No longer twenty meters tall. Now human in scale.A woman hovered before Elios.Her skin was pale gray, hard as marble yet smooth as silk.A pair of jet-black wings, now proportionate to her body, spread wide behind her, beating slowly to hold her position in

Thud. Landing on the back of a giant demon felt exactly like hitting asphalt coated in dry ice. Hard, freezing, and searing against the skin. Elios slammed onto Lyra’s left shoulder. His metal-plated hand grabbed whatever it could find, in this case a thick clump of black hair sprouting from the pale flesh of the Queen. “Ugh.” Vera landed beside him, skidding across the slick, mucus-slick surface of her skin. “Hold on, Vera! Don’t fall!” Elios shouted, catching Vera’s ankle with his still weakened left hand. Feeling parasites clinging to her body, Lyra roared in fury. She shook herself in violent spasms. It was like riding a wild horse during a magnitude nine earthquake. “GET… OFF… ME… LICE!” The Legion’s voice detonated inside their skulls, blurring Elios’s vision. “Sorry, honey! I’m not really in the mood for social distancing!” Elios shot back, his teeth rattling from the tremors. Above them, the three Church gunships that had been spewing lethal firepower suddenly ceased

Falling felt like being pulled back into the cold womb of the earth.There was no scream. The wind roared too violently in Elios’s ears, stealing his voice. Shards of glass and steel from the shattered observation balcony fell with him like an artificial meteor shower.Below, the darkness of the icy crater yawned open. At its center, Lyra’s colossal form glowed violet, waiting for her prey to fall within reach.Elios saw Vera three meters beneath him, her body spinning uncontrollably in midair.“Vera!” Elios screamed in his mind.His human left hand was useless. His right was metal.He did the only thing that metal hand could do.Mid-fall, Elios reached behind his belt and yanked free the portable grappling hook launcher he had taken from the corpse of a Paladin at the docks.He aimed. Not at the distant ice wall, but at one of the massive golden chains still restraining Lyra’s body, a chain stretching horizonta

A high pitched ringing filled Elios’s ears, drowning out the facility alarms still wailing in the distance.“…lios! Elios! Wake up!”The voice sounded as if it were coming from underwater. Hands were shaking his shoulder in panic.Elios’s eyes snapped open. He dragged in a sharp breath as if surfacing from the depths of the ocean. Cold air mixed with concrete dust stabbed into his lungs.The first thing he saw was Vera’s face.The female agent was kneeling beside him. White dust coated her features, dried blood clung to the corner of her mouth, and her right shoulder, where Elios had shot her, was wrapped in a hastily applied bandage already blooming red.“I’m… I’m still alive?” Elios croaked. He tried to sit up, but the world spun violently.“You were thrown five meters. Your head hit the wall. Mild concussion,” Vera reported, her voice trembling between relief and pain as she helped him upright. “If you had not woken u